“This is the wrong thing to happen at the wrong time for our economy,” Imara Jones told me. He is the economic justice contributor for Colorlines.com, and served in the Clinton White House, where he worked on international trade policy. “Jobless benefits are actually stimulative to the economy,” he said. “Every $1 we provide to someone of unemployment benefits yields $1.60 in economic activity. And that’s why the loss of these benefits is going to rob our economy of $41 billion.” People living on the edge financially spend what they have to get by. Those in the top echelons of our economy, the top 1 percent, can take their income and hold on to it, or stash it away into an offshore account.

The unemployment-insurance program traditionally granted 26 weeks of replacement pay for workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. The extended benefits, signed into law by President George W. Bush, lengthened the time period to up to 99 weeks. Benefits average just $300 a week. According to The Washington Post, the average job search lasts 35 weeks, so the current 26-week benefit will create added stress on families already struggling.

Congress could renew the extended benefits. Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island, and Sen. Dean Heller, a Republican of Nevada, have put forth a bill that would preserve the extended benefits for three months. Heller said in a press release: “Providing a safety net for those in need is one of the most important functions of the federal government. As Nevada’s unemployment rate continues to top the charts nationwide, many families and individuals back home do not know how they are going to meet their basic needs.”

Although this proposal is bipartisan, it is expected to be blocked by Republicans when it comes to a procedural vote around Jan. 6, unless five more GOP senators can be convinced to support it. Even if it passes the Senate, the bill would still face a House of Representatives controlled by Republicans who are generally hostile to any extension.

On the other end of the economy, a year-end stock-market rally is expected to boost the massive bonuses Wall Street is preparing to hand out. The largest Wall Street firms have reportedly set aside more than $91 billion for year-end bonuses. In response, an activist group called The Other 98% has launched a petition calling on employees of Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America to donate their bonuses to the 10 million Americans displaced by the housing crisis.

Alexis Goldstein worked for years on Wall Street, and now is the communications director for The Other 98%. She told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, “Wall Street could take $60 billion out of their bonuses and help ... fund something called the National Housing Trust Fund for two years. It’s a program that, if funded at $30 billion for 10 years, could end homelessness in America.” She points out the bonuses are essentially publicly financed because Wall Street banks obtain funds from the Federal Reserve at very low rates. These banks also can afford huge bonuses, she says, because “they continue to commit crimes that are very profitable.” Goldstein noted two criminal settlements made by JPMorgan Chase, one for $13 billion for mortgage fraud, and another for $300 million for manipulating electricity rates in California.

Inequality entered mainstream public discourse through the activism of Occupy Wall Street. The cold, economic reality of it is hitting more homes this week, as unemployment benefits expire. Congress can, and should, renew them. Whether it does depends on people who care speaking out.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.

For more, we’re joined by Imara Jones. He’s the economic justice contributor for Colorlines.com, served in the Clinton White House, where he worked on international trade policy, recently wrote an article called "The Grinches Who Stole Jobless Benefits."

Imara Jones, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about this, in this holiday season, what’s taken place.

IMARAJONES: Well, in any season it’s a dreadful thing to happen, but it’s even more so now. And the problem is that not only is it the holiday season, but this is the wrong thing to happen at the wrong time for our economy, for all of the reasons that you just laid out. And the problem is that long-term unemployment is still a problem. And in a year in which there’s a lot of talk about the need to focus on equity and inequities in our economy, the loss of over a million benefits for the people just days ago and then up to five million in the year ahead is going to make that infinitely harder.

AMYGOODMAN: How did this happen? And how did—I mean, while the Democrats criticize this, but they signed on to the deal.

IMARAJONES: I think two things happened. The first is that this is not a surprise, given where the GOP has been since it swept to power in 2010. They’ve made a lot of statements, and they believe, right and truly, that it’s not the role of the government to be involved in helping people who are the most vulnerable. And that’s just a declaration that they’ve made and that has been a part of their actions. I think what happened with the Democratic Party is that there probably was a sense that this wasn’t going to happen, that there had always been some brinksmanship around unemployment benefits, but there had always a way that was found. But it probably was just a bridge too far for John Boehner, given the fact that he just cut a deal with the Democrats on the budget at large, and so something else had to be given up.

AMYGOODMAN: Speaking on Fox News, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said long-term jobless benefits can create a group of perpetually unemployed people.

SEN. RANDPAUL: I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers. There was a study that came out a few months ago, and it said if you have a worker that’s been unemployed for four weeks and on unemployment insurance, and one that’s on 99 weeks, which would you hire? Every employer, nearly 100 percent, said they will always hire the person who’s been out of work four weeks. When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And it really—while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you’re trying to help.

AMYGOODMAN: Imara Jones, respond to Senator Paul.

IMARAJONES: Two things. First of all, that’s just not true. I mean, the Fed—Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco came out with a study and said that unemployment benefits actually have very little impact on whether or not people remain jobless. It only extends joblessness by up to seven days. What it does do is that it allows people to be able to sustain themselves while looking for work. So there’s no impact on jobless benefits on joblessness.

And the second thing is that jobless benefits are actually stimulative to the economy. They are actually—add, for every one dollar we provide to someone of unemployment benefits, it yields $1.60 in economic activity. And that’s why the loss of these benefits is going to rob our economy of $41 billion, at a time when the economy is still very schizophrenic. It can’t figure out whether it’s going to recover and how it’s going to recover. And the problem with selective studies like Senator Paul sort of pulled out is that it’s not about an individual fact, it’s about an assessment. And the bottom line is that we’re not in a good shape on unemployment.

AMYGOODMAN: In the past, the unemployment benefits have been extended. Is it going to happen this time?

IMARAJONES: It’s hard to see how that’s going to happen.

AMYGOODMAN: Who are the unemployed in this country? And we just have 30 seconds.

IMARAJONES: They are disproportionately—long-term unemployed are disproportionately people of color. They are across all educational areas and backgrounds. Age-wise, a pretty wide standard age distribution, but the longest of the long-term unemployed are actually older. And so, what’s going to happen is that a lot of these people are either going to be pushed into poverty, they’re going to drop out of the job force and extend that problem, or they’re going to actually file and go on Social Security early, so they’re going to actually push up the cost that the GOP says that it wants to hold down. So, it doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Imara Jones, economic justice contributor to Colorlines.com, served in the Clinton White House.

Freeport, Ill., is the site of one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. On Aug. 27, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated there in their campaign for Illinois’ seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost that race, but the Freeport debate set the stage for his eventual defeat of Douglas in the presidential election of 1860, and thus the Civil War. Today, as the African-American president of the United States prepares to debate the candidate from the party of Lincoln, workers in Freeport are staging a protest, hoping to put their plight into the center of the national debate this election season.

A group of workers from Sensata Technologies have set up their tents in a protest encampment across the road from the plant where many of them have spent their adult lives working. Sensata makes high-tech sensors for automobiles, including the sensors that help automatic transmissions run safely. Sensata Technologies recently bought the plant from Honeywell, and promptly told the more than 170 workers there that their jobs and all the plant’s equipment would be shipped to China.

You may never have heard of Sensata Technologies, but in this election season, you’ve probably heard the name of its owner, Bain Capital, the company co-founded and formerly run by Mitt Romney. When they learned this, close to a dozen Sensata employees decided to put up a fight, to challenge Romney to put into practice his very campaign slogans to save American jobs. They traveled to Tampa, Fla., joining in a poor people’s campaign at a temporary camp called Romneyville (after the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression). They organized a petition drive, getting 35,000 people to join their demand for Romney to call on his former colleagues to save their jobs. Since Freeport is close to two swing states, Iowa and Wisconsin, they traveled to a Romney rally and appealed directly to him there (Ironically, for appealing to Romney to save their jobs from being sent to China, the Sensata workers were jeered as communists at the rally, and removed by U.S. Secret Service).

Then the workers established Bainport. Set up at the Stephenson County Fairgrounds, with the full support of the community, the workers have spent more than two weeks camped out, with a dozen tents, a large circus-style tent serving as a covered gathering space and command center, and an outdoor kitchen. They built a stage with a banner reading, “Mitt Romney: Come to Freeport” and signs like “Romney does have a jobs plan ... too bad it’s for China.” Behind the stage they have built a small bridge that carries the workers across a gully to and from their remaining shifts at the plant.

One night last week, we arrived at Bainport at 10:30. A group of workers and their supporters were sitting around the campfire. I talked to them, one by one, before they made their way to their tents. Dot Turner had to be at work at 5 a.m. I asked her how long she’d been at the plant. “For 43 years. I started in 1969. I was 18 at the time,” she told me. Her message to Romney was clear: “If he was really concerned about the American people and if he was concerned about creating jobs, the 12 million jobs that he always uses as his stump speech, he could create this job by leaving it here.”

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While Romney has yet to visit Freeport, a campaign spokesman addressed the issue of Sensata, turning the issue around onto President Barack Obama: “Despite the president being invested in Sensata through his personal pension fund, and the government owning a major Sensata customer in GM, President Obama has not used his powers to help this situation in any way.”

Obama didn’t respond to the specific charge, but on the campaign trail, he hits Romney hard on Bain outsourcing jobs to China: “When you see these ads he’s running, promising to get tough on China, it feels a lot like that fox saying, “You know, we need more secure chicken coops.”

Freeport Mayor George Gaulrapp visited Bainport on the morning that we broadcast our “Democracy Now!” news hour from the camp. He told me about his hopes for the workers, reflecting on his hometown’s long history: “Freeport is the home of the Lincoln-Douglas debate site. We’ve invited both campaigns, President Obama and Governor Romney, to come to Freeport and debate in an old-style campaign. It would be a perfect opportunity for him, the architect who mastered how to send jobs over offshore, to come back here and reverse the trend. We’re 65 miles from Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville. It’s a perfect location to come, have your feet on the ground and meet a cross-section of America.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,100 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

In 1988, Congress Member Payne explained his desire to break the color line in Congress, saying, quote, "I want to be a congressman to serve as a role model for the young people I talk to on the Newark street corners... I want them to see there are no barriers to achievement. I want to give them a reason to try," he said. That year, Payne handily defeated his Republican opponent, Michael Webb, and achieved his dream.

While in Congress, Payne left his mark in the areas of humanitarian relief and education reform. As a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, he drafted legislation that sought to provide famine relief to the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan. He was also a founder of the Malaria Caucus in Congress and helped secure billions of dollars in humanitarian aid for treating infectious diseases. As a former teacher, Payne led efforts to cut interest rates on Stafford loans for college students and increase the size of need-based Pell grants. He also proudly supported teaching African-American culture and history.

REP. DONALDPAYNE: To know American history, one must know black history. They go hand in hand. Far too often black history has been watered down to disconnected factoids and pieces of trivia or a quick mention in our schools’ history books. We as a nation lost sight of the fact that the accomplishments of African Americans are not ones of disjointed milestones, but ones that have been innumerable, continuous, enduring and diverse.

AMYGOODMAN: Congress Member Payne was also deeply involved in the contemporary struggles of the African-American community, especially around unemployment. In a statement shortly after Payne’s death, President Obama said Payne had, quote, "made it his mission to fight for working families."

As a member of the New Jersey African American Political Alliance, Payne supported an ongoing Newark movement called "The Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality and Justice." The movement is organized by the People’s Organization for Progress, and today marks the 255th consecutive day protesters have marched to raise awareness about a variety of social issues. Their demands include a national jobs program, an end to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, universal single-payer healthcare. The protest is intended to run 381 days, which was the length of the Montgomery boycott.

To find out more about the Newark campaign and Congress Member Payne’s legacy, we’re joined by two people: by Larry Hamm, chair of the People’s Organization for Progress, as well we’re joined by Donald Payne’s brother, William Payne, the former New Jersey Assembly member.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! First, our condolences to the Payne family and community. William Payne, can you talk about your brother?

WILLIAMPAYNE: Yes, I think I can. We were two years apart, and I guess that made me the big brother. And we have been close throughout the years, but I don’t think that’s unusual. Like, my brother and I used to talk often about the fact that there seemed to be some people that resented the fact that we spent a lot of time together, that we seemed to have so much to talk about when we were together. We seemed to be able to be in our own world together. And Don would say, you know, some people seem to resent that. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. It seemed to be a natural thing for us. But he was—he was my, as I say, my kid brother. And then, someone years ago gave me a painting that—there was a picture of the fellow, the young fellow, carrying his brother on a back and saying, "He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother." And I told my brother recently, I said, "Don, you know, I guess they were talking about you carrying me," I said, "because people say that, 'Don, you're such a nice guy, but your brother is—oh, my god, how can you stand him? And if we go to places, don’t bring your brother." So I guess he had to carry me on his back, because there were those that said that Donald was just so nice and genuine. And he was.

He was—my brother was so unassuming. Here is a guy who, I guess, walked with kings but never, ever lost the common touch. He did not realize that he was as significant and as important to the community and to the world as he was. He just took things in stride and never, ever reflected on what position in the world he had. Other people did. They looked at him in awe. An example being, when he went to Newark Airport to try to get back down to Washington, D.C., if there was a long line, he would worry, "Oh, I’m going to miss my plane." And so, we would say, "Well, Don, why don’t you let them know up there that you’re going to D.C., you’re Congress?" He’d say, "Oh, no, no. All these people are waiting to get on the plane. No." So he would never, ever jump the line because of who he was. I think the—

WILLIAMPAYNE: Yes, yes, yes, true. That’s true. For some reason, when I was 16 years old, I had an epiphany that said that never again should I stand on the sidelines while the African-American people were being denied their rights. And that came about when I read about a man by the name of Dr. Ralph Bunche. I read about him, and I said that if that black man, like me, can rise to the heights that he has, then I could—

AMYGOODMAN: The United Nations.

WILLIAMPAYNE: Yes, yes, yes. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize. And I said, at that point—at that point, I almost physically felt the chains of segregation and inferiority and all those things fall from me. I mean, I almost physically felt a metamorphosis from being a second-class citizen, being a Negro, being a colored man, to being someone who said, "From now on, we’re going to do something about it."

Well, yeah, so I—when I went to Rutgers University, there was no chapter of the NAACP there. Even though I, as a person, was the national chairman of the NAACP Youth and College Chapters across the country, I was going to a university that had no chapter in the entire state. I said, "This can’t last." So, anyway, I organized a college chapter there, the first one in the state of New Jersey. The dean of students wasn’t happy about it. I invited Malcolm X to come to Rutgers University to speak to the students. Of course, the dean of students was very angry [inaudible]. Yes, we brought Malcolm there.

And Dr. Martin Luther King, yes, I met Dr. King in 1956 and became close to him for the rest of his life. Just the last time he came to New Jersey was a week before he was killed, and I had happened to run into him at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. I drove up there to try to get inside the church. I was a little late. There was no place to park, so I double-parked my car. And as I was getting out of my car, running toward the church, a car pulled up, and I heard someone say, "Hey Bill, Bill, wait for me." It was Dr. King. He was arriving at the church, and he said, "Bill, I’m so exhausted. I’m just so tired." He said, "They want me to go to another church after this program." He said, "Well, I can’t do it. I’m just too tired." He said, "I’m going to Harry’s house after this, and to raise some money" — Harry Belafonte. Anyway, he went in, made his speech. He came out, and he said, "Bill, I’m going to Harry’s. Why don’t you ride over there with me?" I started to get in the car with him, but I realized I was double-parked, blocking people. And I said, "Oh, Dr. King, I can’t go tonight." I said, "I’ll see you next time." He said, "OK, Bill." He waved goodbye to me out of the back window of that car, and I never saw him again alive. And the next time I was with him was at his funeral. So, yeah, I—but through the years, I was close to Dr. King, and we shared a lot of things together. But—

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to play another clip of Congress Member Donald Payne, a vocal opponent of the Iraq war.

REP. DONALDPAYNE: I was the first member on the Democratic side to vehemently oppose giving the preemptive strike to the President, oppose the war. And so, I had the privilege of—for the two-day debate, of controlling the debate on the floor of the House. And I recall some of us pleading. At that time, the inspectors—Hans Blix and the inspectors—were given authority to go anywhere at that time by Saddam Hussein. However, President Bush ordered the U.N. inspectors out in 48 hours. I knew then that he had his mind made up. Saddam Hussein was admitting that he had no weapons of mass destruction, had no chemical or biological weapons, and that’s why he stopped preventing the inspectors from going wherever they wanted to go. However, the administration’s mind was made up, and they were going to go in on Shock and Awe, come hell or high water.

AMYGOODMAN: And last month, Congress Member Payne responded to the New York Police Department investigation of Newark’s Muslim communities. He expressed his deep concern, saying, quote, "Yes, we face threats from radical Islamic terrorists, but the millions of patriotic, peace-loving Muslims living and working in America are our best defense against threats to our national security. In the quest to prevent terrorist attacks, I hope our security and intelligence forces refrain from infringing upon the civil liberties of the very innocent men, women and children we are seeking to protect."

Larry Hamm, you have long opposed police brutality. You’re chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress. He was just speaking against the Iraq war. You were recently with Congress Member Payne, endorsing this massive protest you have been holding.

LARRYHAMM: That’s right. That’s right. His organization, the New Jersey African American Political Alliance—he invited me to speak before that organization to lay out the demands of the daily protest, the logistics of it. And right there on the spot, the organization voted, and he and the organization endorsed our campaign of protest for jobs for 381 days.

I was also with Congressman Payne in December at a forum at the African-American Cultural Center of the Women in Support of the Million Man March. And Congressman Payne and I were together on a panel about black unemployment and the high rates of unemployment. And that allowed us the opportunity to talk about this campaign, in which we’re now on the 255th day. We started on the 27th of June of last year, and we’re going to go until July 15th of this year. And we are taking our inspiration from the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. But Congressman Payne said to me that he was planning to come and join us on that picket line. And I’m just sorry—the whole community is going to miss him, and I’m sorry he won’t be able to join us in person, but he will certainly be with us in spirit.

AMYGOODMAN: Where is the picket line?

LARRYHAMM: We protest five days a week. We’re at the intersection of West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, right across the street from Essex County College. We’re there from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.

AMYGOODMAN: And why did you choose that area?

LARRYHAMM: Well, that’s a high-visibility, high-traffic area, and we’re trying to impact the general population. And it’s in the center of downtown Newark. So we’re there Monday through Friday. On Saturday, we move down to Broad and Market, which is just a few blocks away. And on Sunday, we return to West Market.

AMYGOODMAN: And the significance of doing this in Newark, Larry Hamm?

LARRYHAMM: Well, the significance is that Newark, New Jersey, has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the state. Right now the official unemployment rate is about 15.6 percent, but if we were to count those people who stopped looking for jobs, whose unemployment has run out, it’s more like 25 to 30 percent, which is almost three times Depression-level unemployment.

AMYGOODMAN: One of the earliest endorsers of Romney is your governor, Chris Christie. Your assessment of his running of the state?

LARRYHAMM: Well, right now, I think a lot of people are really upset with many of the proposals that have come out, and I think this is going to be reflected in the vote in November.

AMYGOODMAN: And your assessment of President Obama? Don Payne, the only African-American Congress member in New Jersey’s history, I think that says something about Don Payne—

LARRYHAMM: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: —and also says something about New Jersey.

LARRYHAMM: Yes, yes.

AMYGOODMAN: President Obama, the first African-American president.

LARRYHAMM: Well, I’m certain that President Obama is going to get the same massive voter turnout that he got in 2008. It may even be higher, because of the opposition. It’s just—these are people who are looking backward. They want to go past the Civil Rights Act. They want to go past the New Deal. And to go backward means more suffering and more pain in our community, and people are not just going to take it lying down. People are going to fight back. They’re going to organize, and they’re going to mobilize. There’s going to be a big turnout on Election Day. And I think, after Election Day, people are going to stay in the streets to continue to pressure for jobs and for peace.

One of the memories I have of Congressman Payne was when the People’s Organization for Progress, together with other groups, pulled together the Peace and Justice Coalition in 2007. We had the largest antiwar march in the history of Newark, New Jersey. And Congressman Payne and Congressman Conyers were with us in the lead of that march on that day.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Larry Hamm, for joining us, New Jersey chair of the People’s Organization for Progress, and former New Jersey Assembly Member William Payne, remembering his brother. Donald Payne died this week at the age of 77. He died of colon cancer, a sitting New Jersey Congress member.

This is Democracy Now! Back in 15 seconds to talk about the arrests of a number of hacktivists, of hackers affiliated with LulzSec and Anonymous.

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Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500"A Declaration of War on the Poor": Cornel West and Tavis Smiley on the Debt Ceiling Agreementhttp://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/9/a_declaration_of_war_on_the
tag:democracynow.org,2011-08-09:en/story/81f94d AMY GOODMAN : On the heels of last week&#8217;s deficit agreement, which widely criticized—was widely criticized for excluding a tax hike on the wealthy, as well as any measures to tackle high unemployment, the Congressional Black Caucus has launched a month-long campaign to address staggering unemployment rates among African Americans. In Detroit, Cleveland and Los Angeles, two cities that are stops on the tour, the unemployment rates are in the 40 percent range. The caucus chair last week slammed the deficit deal as a &quot;Satan sandwich&quot; that unfairly harms African Americans. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports Obama will embark on his own jobs tour that will take place in the middle of the caucus&#8217;s campaign.
Well, we are now going to turn to two leading African-American voices. They have hit the road to challenge President Obama&#8217;s record on poverty. The veteran broadcaster, Tavis Smiley, the author, Princeton University professor, Cornel West, are in the midst of a 15-city, cross-country trek they&#8217;ve called &quot;The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience.&quot; The tour comes on the heels of last week&#8217;s deficit agreement.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Tell us, Tavis, why you&#8217;re at Kent State right now.
TAVIS SMILEY : We&#8217;re at Kent State now as one of many stops on this tour, as you mentioned, Amy, because we&#8217;re trying to raise awareness about this issue, trying to raise the level of debate and conversation about the plight of the poor in this country. I believe, and Dr. West believes, that it is, in fact, the telling of truth that allows suffering to speak. And if we don&#8217;t speak truth to power—and put another way, truth to the powerless—then they end up being rendered invisible in this country.
You mentioned a moment ago, and you&#8217;re absolutely right about this, this deficit-reduction plan, this debt-ceiling plan, that Congress came together on and the President signed, unfortunately, I think is a declaration of war on the poor. Any legislation that doesn&#8217;t extend unemployment benefits, doesn&#8217;t close a single corporate loophole, doesn&#8217;t raise one cent of new revenue in terms of taxes on the rich or the lucky, allows corporate America to get away scot-free again—the banks, Wall Street getting away again—and all these cuts ostensibly on the backs of everyday people.
This conversation now about the poor in this country needs to happen, and so we&#8217;re out here trying to dramatize that and trying to ensure that this time around, in this presidential debate, Mr. Obama and whoever his Republican opponent will be are going to be forced to address the issue, the ever-expanding issue, of the poor in this country.
AMY GOODMAN : You know, before I turn to Cornel West, I was speaking yesterday to Harry Belafonte, the famous singer, actor, activist. I interviewed him earlier this year about his meeting with Cornel. It was before President Obama was president. And this is what he had to say about his conversation with, at the time, Senator Obama.
HARRY BELAFONTE : Every opportunity I’ve had to put that before him, he has heard. I have not had a chance to put it to him as forcefully as I would like to, because he has not yet given us the accessibility to those places where this could be said in a more articulate way and not always on the fly.
But he once said something to me during his campaign for the presidency, and he says—he said, you know—I said, &quot;I’ve heard you&quot; —he was talking before businessmen on Wall Street here in—there in New York. And he said to me—I said, &quot;Well, you know, I hope you bring the challenge more forcefully to the table.&quot; And he said, &quot;Well, when are you and Cornel West going to cut me some slack?&quot; And I got caught with that remark. And I said to him, in rebuttal, I said, &quot;What makes you think we haven’t?&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : That was Harry Belafonte. Cornel West, your response, and why you&#8217;re on this tour, professor at Princeton University?
CORNEL WEST : Well, yeah, we know Harry Belafonte&#8217;s idea of brotherhood. No, Brother Tavis came up with the idea of this Poverty Tour. We&#8217;re on the tour because there has been a top-down, one-sided class war against poor and working people, that&#8217;s led by greedy Wall Street oligarchs and avaricious corporate plutocrats in the name of deregulated markets, which is a morally bankrupt policy, especially when it comes to keeping track of the humanity and dignity of poor and working people. We started with our indigenous brothers and sisters in—
TAVIS SMILEY : Hayward, Wisconsin.
CORNEL WEST : Hayward, Wisconsin.
TAVIS SMILEY : Lac Courte Oreilles.
CORNEL WEST : Lac Courte Oreilles, that&#8217;s it. I wanted to get that right. We spent time with the Hmong workers there in Eau Claire. We were with warehouse workers there in Joliet. We were in Chicago, Detroit. We met with homeless veterans yesterday in—
TAVIS SMILEY : Akron, Ohio.
CORNEL WEST : —in Akron, Ohio. I mean, we went everywhere. We&#8217;re going to spend time with poor whites, poor blacks, poor brown, poor yellow. We&#8217;re trying to reconstitute what Brother Martin Luther King, Jr., died for, which is bringing poor and working people together in the face of these class attacks.
AMY GOODMAN : What is your analysis, Tavis Smiley, of the debt deal?
TAVIS SMILEY : As I tried to emanate a moment ago, I think it&#8217;s a declaration of war. We all know—and this is why The War and Peace Report , Amy, is so important, and we celebrate you and revel in your humanity and the work that you do every day to raise these issues. Dr. King once said, as you well know, Amy, that &quot;war is the enemy of the poor.&quot; &quot;War is the enemy of the poor.&quot; Congress has the power obviously to declare war. They&#8217;ve done that far too many times. We&#8217;re engaged in some excursions right now that we need to find a way to get out of immediately, if not sooner. As my granddad might say, &quot;sooner than at once and quicker than right now,&quot; we need to get out of these wars that we&#8217;re engaged in, because war is the enemy of the poor. So Congress has the power to declare war, and I think they&#8217;ve done that once again. This time, though, they&#8217;ve declared war on the poor. That&#8217;s what this legislation, for me, is all about. I think Congressman Cleaver is right: it&#8217;s a Satan sandwich. And I don&#8217;t want to take—I don&#8217;t want to partake and bite into that.
The bottom line is that our body politic—I want to be clear about this—both Republicans and Democrats, both Congress and the White House, and for that matter, all of the American people, have got to take the issue of the poor more seriously. Why? Because the new poor, the new poor, are the former middle class. Obviously, the polls tell these elected officials, these politicians, that you ought to talk about the middle class, that resonates. Well, if the new poor are the former middle class, then this conversation has got to be expanded. We&#8217;ve got to have a broader conversation about what&#8217;s happening to the poor. And the bottom line for me is this, Amy, with regard to this legislation and all others that are now demonizing, casting aspersion on the poor. There&#8217;s always been a connection between the poor and crime, but now—between poverty and crime, but now it&#8217;s become a crime, it would seem, to be poor in this country. And I believe this country, one day, is going to get crushed under the weight of its own poverty, if we think we can continue to live in a country where one percent of the people own and control more wealth than 90 percent. That math, long term, Amy, is unsustainable. We&#8217;ve got to talk about poverty.
AMY GOODMAN : A new report from the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank Heritage Foundation finds Americans living in poverty are doing better than they have ever been and the definition of poverty needs to be redefined. So Stephen Colbert featured the report last month, right, on Comedy Central on The Colbert Report . I just wanted to play an excerpt from his show.
STEPHEN COLBERT : Jesus said the poor would always be with us. Well, it turns out Jesus does not know everything. For more, Fox News&#8217; Stu Varney makes words come out of his mouth.
STUART VARNEY : When you think of poverty, you picture this. But what if I told you it really looks like this? A new report showing poor families in the United States are not what they used to be. I&#8217;m just going to give our viewers a quick run-through of what items poor families in America have. Ninety-nine percent of them have a refrigerator. Eighty-one percent have a microwave.
STEPHEN COLBERT : A refrigerator and a microwave? They can preserve and heat food? Ooh la la. I guess the poor are too good for mold and trichinosis. It&#8217;s all here, folks, in the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation&#8217;s new report, &quot;Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?&quot; And if you watched closely in Stu Varney&#8217;s report just then, you saw that evidently poverty is the plasma flat-screen aisle at Best Buy. And you will not believe some of the stuff poor people have in their homes: luxuries like ceiling fans, DVD players.
AMY GOODMAN : There you have Stephen Colbert, an excerpt of his response to the Heritage Foundation report, &quot;Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?&quot; That&#8217;s the title of the Heritage Foundation report. Cornel West, your response?
CORNEL WEST : No, thank God for Brother Colbert. The Heritage Foundation has been spreading lies to justify indifference toward poor people for three decades as part of the right-wing intellectual assault on working and poor people. Tavis and I were at Camp Forest tent city outside of Ann Arbor. They&#8217;ve been there a number of years. And in fact, they just got heat, what was it, two years ago. They&#8217;ve been there for many years. They just got heat. So, the Heritage Foundation, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, but this is part of the fightback. The Heritage Foundation supports the counter-revolution in the name of oligarchs and plutocrats. We want to be part of the fightback, and there&#8217;s millions out there who want to be part of the fightback, as the oligarchs and plutocrats attempt to squeeze all of the democratic juices out of the American social experiment.
AMY GOODMAN : This is a listening tour, Tavis Smiley, as you&#8217;ve described it. Talk about what you&#8217;ve heard, as you go from Chicago to Akron, Ohio. Talk about what people are telling you. Thousands of people are turning out. You were on the South Side of Chicago; this is where President Obama spent so many years.
TAVIS SMILEY : We&#8217;re hearing a number of things. Let me try to give you three right quick, in no particular order. Number one, these unemployment numbers are real. And it&#8217;s very clear to me and other economists who are willing to be honest about this that whatever numbers the government is giving us about unemployment, the numbers are far worse, because so many Americans have stopped looking for work. We talked to a group last night of unemployed, homeless, military veterans—Army, Navy, Marines—a room full of them, just outside of Kent State last night in Akron, Ohio, and to hear these persons, who have put their lives on the line for this country, who cannot find work. A woman named Hillary last night has been out of work for three years, and she broke down last night crying, weeping uncontrollably about the fact that she keeps applying and reapplying. She cannot find work. Unemployment here in Akron, Ohio, a bellwether state in these presidential elections every four years—unemployment is off the charts here. And these, last night, just happen to be primarily, overwhelmingly white Americans. So, when we talk about unemployment, we&#8217;re not just talking about black folk and brown folk. Across the board, too many Americans are unemployed, and the numbers that we are given every month are not really as accurate as they ought to be, number one.
CORNEL WEST : That&#8217;s right.
TAVIS SMILEY : Number two, we&#8217;re hearing from people that the process is broken, our political process is broken, and there&#8217;s a hopelessness in this country right now. I just returned from China, Amy, some weeks ago, and in China—and I could debate all day long, and I&#8217;ve got issues with the way they do a lot of stuff in China, but there is a sense of hopefulness about their future. And you hear, across this country, so many Americans who sense a hopelessness about the future of this country. So many Americans now think that our best days as a nation are behind us, and we&#8217;re hearing that too often on this tour.
But we&#8217;re also hearing—we&#8217;re also hearing that there&#8217;s got to be a commitment to everyday people, a commitment to the poor. If we can find a way to get the debt ceiling raised, if we can find a trillion dollars for these military excursions, etc., etc., etc., why can&#8217;t we get serious and come together in Washington, perhaps at a White House conference on poverty—hint, hint—to talk about a way to eradicate poverty in 10, 15, 20 years. It can be done if we commit ourselves to it. And the poor are feeling more and more invisible. The worst thing you can do to a human being is to make him or her feel invisible, as if they don&#8217;t matter, as if they&#8217;re throwaway, as if they&#8217;re disposable. And too many Americans are feeling that right about now.
AMY GOODMAN : A recent Washington Post / ABC News poll found 86 percent of African Americans expressed approval of the job President Obama is doing, even as support for him has slipped among other groups. This is from the Washington Post . The view is nuanced, though: &quot;Among blacks, approval of the president&#8217;s economic policies has weakened, with only 54 percent saying the policies have made the economy better compared with 77 percent in October.&quot; Cornel West, you have been both a supporter of Senator Obama in becoming president and a fierce critic. These polls are shifting, even among his hugest support group. What about what has happened, and where you think President Obama is trying to take the country, and where you think it needs to go?
CORNEL WEST : Well, I think, on the one hand, large numbers of black people rightly want to protect President Obama against the vicious right-wing attacks, the Fox News-like attacks, the lies about him being socialist, Muslim and so forth. On the other hand, the suffering intensifies. It&#8217;s very clear that President Obama caves in over and over and over again. He punts on first down. If you&#8217;re in a foxhole with him, you&#8217;re in trouble, because he wants to compromise, you want to fight. He doesn&#8217;t have the kind of backbone he ought to have. So black folk find themselves in a dilemma: how do we protect him against the right-wing attacks and at the same time keep him accountable, especially when it comes to poor and working people?
Unfortunately, Tim Geithner and his economic team have nothing to do with the legacy of Martin King, have indifference toward poor and working people. He listens to them, hence he&#8217;s rightly associated much more with the oligarchs than with poor people. We hope he changes his mind. We hope he gets a progressive economic team, even though, as you know, many of us are exploring other kinds of possibilities in the coming election, given his lukewarmness.
AMY GOODMAN : What are you exploring exactly? Are you talking about another candidate running for president?
CORNEL WEST : It would be a Bernie Sanders-like figure who is fundamentally committed to the legacy of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dorothy Day, putting poor and working people at the center.
AMY GOODMAN : When you say Bernie Sanders-type, is Bernie Sanders considering running for president?
CORNEL WEST : Unfortunately, I don&#8217;t think so.
TAVIS SMILEY : He said he&#8217;s not.
CORNEL WEST : I wish he was, because he&#8217;s my kind of brother. But someone like that who&#8217;s got backbone and courage.
AMY GOODMAN : Tavis Smiley, would you like to see someone else run, and are you considering it yourself?
TAVIS SMILEY : That right there is the joke of the day. Actually, Dr. West has a great line about that, Amy. You should have asked him that question; he has a great line. He says, you would much sooner find him in a crack house than in the White House. That&#8217;s his response to that.
As you well know, my role on public television and public radio doesn&#8217;t put me in the realm of endorsing candidates. I have not done that. My role is to talk about accountability, to challenge folk to reexamine the assumptions they hold about the poor, to help them expand their inventory of ideas, to introduce Americans to the poor with these platforms that I have. So I&#8217;m not in the endorsing business, I&#8217;m in the accountability business. And that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re on this Poverty Tour.
But to your question, I don&#8217;t think the President would be hurt, necessarily—the country certainly would not be hurt—by a primary challenge that would refocus him on what really matters. It would refocus him on what&#8217;s happening to too many people in this country. It would refocus him on a more progressive agenda. But having said that, I think if the race were held today, the President still wins. You can&#8217;t beat somebody with nobody, and I don&#8217;t see who the somebody is that can beat the President. So, Doc and I have had many debates, and I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;re going to get right back at this debate once we get on the bus again and take off to the next city in just a few minutes on the Poverty Tour.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to have to leave it there.
TAVIS SMILEY : But I think that a challenge would refocus him—
AMY GOODMAN : Tavis, we&#8217;re going to have to leave it there. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, thanks so much for joining us. AMYGOODMAN: On the heels of last week’s deficit agreement, which widely criticized—was widely criticized for excluding a tax hike on the wealthy, as well as any measures to tackle high unemployment, the Congressional Black Caucus has launched a month-long campaign to address staggering unemployment rates among African Americans. In Detroit, Cleveland and Los Angeles, two cities that are stops on the tour, the unemployment rates are in the 40 percent range. The caucus chair last week slammed the deficit deal as a "Satan sandwich" that unfairly harms African Americans. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports Obama will embark on his own jobs tour that will take place in the middle of the caucus’s campaign.

Well, we are now going to turn to two leading African-American voices. They have hit the road to challenge President Obama’s record on poverty. The veteran broadcaster, Tavis Smiley, the author, Princeton University professor, Cornel West, are in the midst of a 15-city, cross-country trek they’ve called "The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience." The tour comes on the heels of last week’s deficit agreement.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Tell us, Tavis, why you’re at Kent State right now.

TAVISSMILEY: We’re at Kent State now as one of many stops on this tour, as you mentioned, Amy, because we’re trying to raise awareness about this issue, trying to raise the level of debate and conversation about the plight of the poor in this country. I believe, and Dr. West believes, that it is, in fact, the telling of truth that allows suffering to speak. And if we don’t speak truth to power—and put another way, truth to the powerless—then they end up being rendered invisible in this country.

You mentioned a moment ago, and you’re absolutely right about this, this deficit-reduction plan, this debt-ceiling plan, that Congress came together on and the President signed, unfortunately, I think is a declaration of war on the poor. Any legislation that doesn’t extend unemployment benefits, doesn’t close a single corporate loophole, doesn’t raise one cent of new revenue in terms of taxes on the rich or the lucky, allows corporate America to get away scot-free again—the banks, Wall Street getting away again—and all these cuts ostensibly on the backs of everyday people.

This conversation now about the poor in this country needs to happen, and so we’re out here trying to dramatize that and trying to ensure that this time around, in this presidential debate, Mr. Obama and whoever his Republican opponent will be are going to be forced to address the issue, the ever-expanding issue, of the poor in this country.

AMYGOODMAN: You know, before I turn to Cornel West, I was speaking yesterday to Harry Belafonte, the famous singer, actor, activist. I interviewed him earlier this year about his meeting with Cornel. It was before President Obama was president. And this is what he had to say about his conversation with, at the time, Senator Obama.

HARRYBELAFONTE: Every opportunity I’ve had to put that before him, he has heard. I have not had a chance to put it to him as forcefully as I would like to, because he has not yet given us the accessibility to those places where this could be said in a more articulate way and not always on the fly.

But he once said something to me during his campaign for the presidency, and he says—he said, you know—I said, "I’ve heard you" —he was talking before businessmen on Wall Street here in—there in New York. And he said to me—I said, "Well, you know, I hope you bring the challenge more forcefully to the table." And he said, "Well, when are you and Cornel West going to cut me some slack?" And I got caught with that remark. And I said to him, in rebuttal, I said, "What makes you think we haven’t?"

AMYGOODMAN: That was Harry Belafonte. Cornel West, your response, and why you’re on this tour, professor at Princeton University?

CORNELWEST: Well, yeah, we know Harry Belafonte’s idea of brotherhood. No, Brother Tavis came up with the idea of this Poverty Tour. We’re on the tour because there has been a top-down, one-sided class war against poor and working people, that’s led by greedy Wall Street oligarchs and avaricious corporate plutocrats in the name of deregulated markets, which is a morally bankrupt policy, especially when it comes to keeping track of the humanity and dignity of poor and working people. We started with our indigenous brothers and sisters in—

TAVISSMILEY: Hayward, Wisconsin.

CORNELWEST: Hayward, Wisconsin.

TAVISSMILEY: Lac Courte Oreilles.

CORNELWEST: Lac Courte Oreilles, that’s it. I wanted to get that right. We spent time with the Hmong workers there in Eau Claire. We were with warehouse workers there in Joliet. We were in Chicago, Detroit. We met with homeless veterans yesterday in—

TAVISSMILEY: Akron, Ohio.

CORNELWEST: —in Akron, Ohio. I mean, we went everywhere. We’re going to spend time with poor whites, poor blacks, poor brown, poor yellow. We’re trying to reconstitute what Brother Martin Luther King, Jr., died for, which is bringing poor and working people together in the face of these class attacks.

AMYGOODMAN: What is your analysis, Tavis Smiley, of the debt deal?

TAVISSMILEY: As I tried to emanate a moment ago, I think it’s a declaration of war. We all know—and this is why The War and Peace Report, Amy, is so important, and we celebrate you and revel in your humanity and the work that you do every day to raise these issues. Dr. King once said, as you well know, Amy, that "war is the enemy of the poor." "War is the enemy of the poor." Congress has the power obviously to declare war. They’ve done that far too many times. We’re engaged in some excursions right now that we need to find a way to get out of immediately, if not sooner. As my granddad might say, "sooner than at once and quicker than right now," we need to get out of these wars that we’re engaged in, because war is the enemy of the poor. So Congress has the power to declare war, and I think they’ve done that once again. This time, though, they’ve declared war on the poor. That’s what this legislation, for me, is all about. I think Congressman Cleaver is right: it’s a Satan sandwich. And I don’t want to take—I don’t want to partake and bite into that.

The bottom line is that our body politic—I want to be clear about this—both Republicans and Democrats, both Congress and the White House, and for that matter, all of the American people, have got to take the issue of the poor more seriously. Why? Because the new poor, the new poor, are the former middle class. Obviously, the polls tell these elected officials, these politicians, that you ought to talk about the middle class, that resonates. Well, if the new poor are the former middle class, then this conversation has got to be expanded. We’ve got to have a broader conversation about what’s happening to the poor. And the bottom line for me is this, Amy, with regard to this legislation and all others that are now demonizing, casting aspersion on the poor. There’s always been a connection between the poor and crime, but now—between poverty and crime, but now it’s become a crime, it would seem, to be poor in this country. And I believe this country, one day, is going to get crushed under the weight of its own poverty, if we think we can continue to live in a country where one percent of the people own and control more wealth than 90 percent. That math, long term, Amy, is unsustainable. We’ve got to talk about poverty.

AMYGOODMAN: A new report from the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank Heritage Foundation finds Americans living in poverty are doing better than they have ever been and the definition of poverty needs to be redefined. So Stephen Colbert featured the report last month, right, on Comedy Central on The Colbert Report. I just wanted to play an excerpt from his show.

STEPHENCOLBERT: Jesus said the poor would always be with us. Well, it turns out Jesus does not know everything. For more, Fox News’ Stu Varney makes words come out of his mouth.

STUARTVARNEY: When you think of poverty, you picture this. But what if I told you it really looks like this? A new report showing poor families in the United States are not what they used to be. I’m just going to give our viewers a quick run-through of what items poor families in America have. Ninety-nine percent of them have a refrigerator. Eighty-one percent have a microwave.

STEPHENCOLBERT: A refrigerator and a microwave? They can preserve and heat food? Ooh la la. I guess the poor are too good for mold and trichinosis. It’s all here, folks, in the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation’s new report, "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?" And if you watched closely in Stu Varney’s report just then, you saw that evidently poverty is the plasma flat-screen aisle at Best Buy. And you will not believe some of the stuff poor people have in their homes: luxuries like ceiling fans, DVD players.

AMYGOODMAN: There you have Stephen Colbert, an excerpt of his response to the Heritage Foundation report, "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?" That’s the title of the Heritage Foundation report. Cornel West, your response?

CORNELWEST: No, thank God for Brother Colbert. The Heritage Foundation has been spreading lies to justify indifference toward poor people for three decades as part of the right-wing intellectual assault on working and poor people. Tavis and I were at Camp Forest tent city outside of Ann Arbor. They’ve been there a number of years. And in fact, they just got heat, what was it, two years ago. They’ve been there for many years. They just got heat. So, the Heritage Foundation, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, but this is part of the fightback. The Heritage Foundation supports the counter-revolution in the name of oligarchs and plutocrats. We want to be part of the fightback, and there’s millions out there who want to be part of the fightback, as the oligarchs and plutocrats attempt to squeeze all of the democratic juices out of the American social experiment.

AMYGOODMAN: This is a listening tour, Tavis Smiley, as you’ve described it. Talk about what you’ve heard, as you go from Chicago to Akron, Ohio. Talk about what people are telling you. Thousands of people are turning out. You were on the South Side of Chicago; this is where President Obama spent so many years.

TAVISSMILEY: We’re hearing a number of things. Let me try to give you three right quick, in no particular order. Number one, these unemployment numbers are real. And it’s very clear to me and other economists who are willing to be honest about this that whatever numbers the government is giving us about unemployment, the numbers are far worse, because so many Americans have stopped looking for work. We talked to a group last night of unemployed, homeless, military veterans—Army, Navy, Marines—a room full of them, just outside of Kent State last night in Akron, Ohio, and to hear these persons, who have put their lives on the line for this country, who cannot find work. A woman named Hillary last night has been out of work for three years, and she broke down last night crying, weeping uncontrollably about the fact that she keeps applying and reapplying. She cannot find work. Unemployment here in Akron, Ohio, a bellwether state in these presidential elections every four years—unemployment is off the charts here. And these, last night, just happen to be primarily, overwhelmingly white Americans. So, when we talk about unemployment, we’re not just talking about black folk and brown folk. Across the board, too many Americans are unemployed, and the numbers that we are given every month are not really as accurate as they ought to be, number one.

CORNELWEST: That’s right.

TAVISSMILEY: Number two, we’re hearing from people that the process is broken, our political process is broken, and there’s a hopelessness in this country right now. I just returned from China, Amy, some weeks ago, and in China—and I could debate all day long, and I’ve got issues with the way they do a lot of stuff in China, but there is a sense of hopefulness about their future. And you hear, across this country, so many Americans who sense a hopelessness about the future of this country. So many Americans now think that our best days as a nation are behind us, and we’re hearing that too often on this tour.

But we’re also hearing—we’re also hearing that there’s got to be a commitment to everyday people, a commitment to the poor. If we can find a way to get the debt ceiling raised, if we can find a trillion dollars for these military excursions, etc., etc., etc., why can’t we get serious and come together in Washington, perhaps at a White House conference on poverty—hint, hint—to talk about a way to eradicate poverty in 10, 15, 20 years. It can be done if we commit ourselves to it. And the poor are feeling more and more invisible. The worst thing you can do to a human being is to make him or her feel invisible, as if they don’t matter, as if they’re throwaway, as if they’re disposable. And too many Americans are feeling that right about now.

AMYGOODMAN: A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found 86 percent of African Americans expressed approval of the job President Obama is doing, even as support for him has slipped among other groups. This is from the Washington Post. The view is nuanced, though: "Among blacks, approval of the president’s economic policies has weakened, with only 54 percent saying the policies have made the economy better compared with 77 percent in October." Cornel West, you have been both a supporter of Senator Obama in becoming president and a fierce critic. These polls are shifting, even among his hugest support group. What about what has happened, and where you think President Obama is trying to take the country, and where you think it needs to go?

CORNELWEST: Well, I think, on the one hand, large numbers of black people rightly want to protect President Obama against the vicious right-wing attacks, the Fox News-like attacks, the lies about him being socialist, Muslim and so forth. On the other hand, the suffering intensifies. It’s very clear that President Obama caves in over and over and over again. He punts on first down. If you’re in a foxhole with him, you’re in trouble, because he wants to compromise, you want to fight. He doesn’t have the kind of backbone he ought to have. So black folk find themselves in a dilemma: how do we protect him against the right-wing attacks and at the same time keep him accountable, especially when it comes to poor and working people?

Unfortunately, Tim Geithner and his economic team have nothing to do with the legacy of Martin King, have indifference toward poor and working people. He listens to them, hence he’s rightly associated much more with the oligarchs than with poor people. We hope he changes his mind. We hope he gets a progressive economic team, even though, as you know, many of us are exploring other kinds of possibilities in the coming election, given his lukewarmness.

AMYGOODMAN: What are you exploring exactly? Are you talking about another candidate running for president?

CORNELWEST: It would be a Bernie Sanders-like figure who is fundamentally committed to the legacy of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dorothy Day, putting poor and working people at the center.

AMYGOODMAN: When you say Bernie Sanders-type, is Bernie Sanders considering running for president?

CORNELWEST: Unfortunately, I don’t think so.

TAVISSMILEY: He said he’s not.

CORNELWEST: I wish he was, because he’s my kind of brother. But someone like that who’s got backbone and courage.

AMYGOODMAN: Tavis Smiley, would you like to see someone else run, and are you considering it yourself?

TAVISSMILEY: That right there is the joke of the day. Actually, Dr. West has a great line about that, Amy. You should have asked him that question; he has a great line. He says, you would much sooner find him in a crack house than in the White House. That’s his response to that.

As you well know, my role on public television and public radio doesn’t put me in the realm of endorsing candidates. I have not done that. My role is to talk about accountability, to challenge folk to reexamine the assumptions they hold about the poor, to help them expand their inventory of ideas, to introduce Americans to the poor with these platforms that I have. So I’m not in the endorsing business, I’m in the accountability business. And that’s why we’re on this Poverty Tour.

But to your question, I don’t think the President would be hurt, necessarily—the country certainly would not be hurt—by a primary challenge that would refocus him on what really matters. It would refocus him on what’s happening to too many people in this country. It would refocus him on a more progressive agenda. But having said that, I think if the race were held today, the President still wins. You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and I don’t see who the somebody is that can beat the President. So, Doc and I have had many debates, and I’m sure we’re going to get right back at this debate once we get on the bus again and take off to the next city in just a few minutes on the Poverty Tour.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there.

TAVISSMILEY: But I think that a challenge would refocus him—

AMYGOODMAN: Tavis, we’re going to have to leave it there. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, thanks so much for joining us.

]]>
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400Cornel West & Tavis Smiley on Obama: "Many of Us Are Exploring Other Possibilities in Coming Election”http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/9/cornel_west_tavis_smiley_on_obama
tag:democracynow.org,2011-08-09:en/story/732cec AMY GOODMAN : A recent Washington Post / ABC News poll found 86 percent of African Americans expressed approval of the job President Obama is doing, even as support for him has slipped among other groups. This is from the Washington Post . The view is nuanced, though: &quot;Among blacks, approval of the president&#8217;s economic policies has weakened, with only 54 percent saying the policies have made the economy better compared with 77 percent in October.&quot; Cornel West, you have been both a supporter of Senator Obama in becoming president and a fierce critic. These polls are shifting, even among his hugest support group. What about what has happened, and where you think President Obama is trying to take the country, and where you think it needs to go?
CORNEL WEST : Well, I think, on the one hand, large numbers of black people rightly want to protect President Obama against the vicious right-wing attacks, the Fox News-like attacks, the lies about him being socialist, Muslim and so forth. On the other hand, the suffering intensifies. It&#8217;s very clear that President Obama caves in over and over and over again. He punts on first down. If you&#8217;re in a foxhole with him, you&#8217;re in trouble, because he wants to compromise, you want to fight. He doesn&#8217;t have the kind of backbone he ought to have. So black folk find themselves in a dilemma: how do we protect him against the right-wing attacks and at the same time keep him accountable, especially when it comes to poor and working people?
Unfortunately, Tim Geithner and his economic team have nothing to do with the legacy of Martin King, have indifference toward poor and working people. He listens to them, hence he&#8217;s rightly associated much more with the oligarchs than with poor people. We hope he changes his mind. We hope he gets a progressive economic team, even though, as you know, many of us are exploring other kinds of possibilities in the coming election, given his lukewarmness.
AMY GOODMAN : What are you exploring exactly? Are you talking about another candidate running for president?
CORNEL WEST : It would be a Bernie Sanders-like figure who is fundamentally committed to the legacy of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dorothy Day, putting poor and working people at the center.
AMY GOODMAN : When you say Bernie Sanders-type, is Bernie Sanders considering running for president?
CORNEL WEST : Unfortunately, I don&#8217;t think so.
TAVIS SMILEY : He said he&#8217;s not.
CORNEL WEST : I wish he was, because he&#8217;s my kind of brother. But someone like that who&#8217;s got backbone and courage.
AMY GOODMAN : Tavis Smiley, would you like to see someone else run, and are you considering it yourself?
TAVIS SMILEY : That right there is the joke of the day. Actually, Dr. West has a great line about that, Amy. You should have asked him that question; he has a great line. He says, you would much sooner find him in a crack house than in the White House. That&#8217;s his response to that.
As you well know, my role on public television and public radio doesn&#8217;t put me in the realm of endorsing candidates. I have not done that. My role is to talk about accountability, to challenge folk to reexamine the assumptions they hold about the poor, to help them expand their inventory of ideas, to introduce Americans to the poor with these platforms that I have. So I&#8217;m not in the endorsing business, I&#8217;m in the accountability business. And that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re on this Poverty Tour.
But to your question, I don&#8217;t think the President would be hurt, necessarily—the country certainly would not be hurt—by a primary challenge that would refocus him on what really matters. It would refocus him on what&#8217;s happening to too many people in this country. It would refocus him on a more progressive agenda. But having said that, I think if the race were held today, the President still wins. You can&#8217;t beat somebody with nobody, and I don&#8217;t see who the somebody is that can beat the President. So, Doc and I have had many debates, and I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;re going to get right back at this debate once we get on the bus again and take off to the next city in just a few minutes on the Poverty Tour.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to have to leave it there.
TAVIS SMILEY : But I think that a challenge would refocus him—
AMY GOODMAN : Tavis, we&#8217;re going to have to leave it there. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, thanks so much for joining us. AMYGOODMAN: A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found 86 percent of African Americans expressed approval of the job President Obama is doing, even as support for him has slipped among other groups. This is from the Washington Post. The view is nuanced, though: "Among blacks, approval of the president’s economic policies has weakened, with only 54 percent saying the policies have made the economy better compared with 77 percent in October." Cornel West, you have been both a supporter of Senator Obama in becoming president and a fierce critic. These polls are shifting, even among his hugest support group. What about what has happened, and where you think President Obama is trying to take the country, and where you think it needs to go?

CORNELWEST: Well, I think, on the one hand, large numbers of black people rightly want to protect President Obama against the vicious right-wing attacks, the Fox News-like attacks, the lies about him being socialist, Muslim and so forth. On the other hand, the suffering intensifies. It’s very clear that President Obama caves in over and over and over again. He punts on first down. If you’re in a foxhole with him, you’re in trouble, because he wants to compromise, you want to fight. He doesn’t have the kind of backbone he ought to have. So black folk find themselves in a dilemma: how do we protect him against the right-wing attacks and at the same time keep him accountable, especially when it comes to poor and working people?

Unfortunately, Tim Geithner and his economic team have nothing to do with the legacy of Martin King, have indifference toward poor and working people. He listens to them, hence he’s rightly associated much more with the oligarchs than with poor people. We hope he changes his mind. We hope he gets a progressive economic team, even though, as you know, many of us are exploring other kinds of possibilities in the coming election, given his lukewarmness.

AMYGOODMAN: What are you exploring exactly? Are you talking about another candidate running for president?

CORNELWEST: It would be a Bernie Sanders-like figure who is fundamentally committed to the legacy of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dorothy Day, putting poor and working people at the center.

AMYGOODMAN: When you say Bernie Sanders-type, is Bernie Sanders considering running for president?

CORNELWEST: Unfortunately, I don’t think so.

TAVISSMILEY: He said he’s not.

CORNELWEST: I wish he was, because he’s my kind of brother. But someone like that who’s got backbone and courage.

AMYGOODMAN: Tavis Smiley, would you like to see someone else run, and are you considering it yourself?

TAVISSMILEY: That right there is the joke of the day. Actually, Dr. West has a great line about that, Amy. You should have asked him that question; he has a great line. He says, you would much sooner find him in a crack house than in the White House. That’s his response to that.

As you well know, my role on public television and public radio doesn’t put me in the realm of endorsing candidates. I have not done that. My role is to talk about accountability, to challenge folk to reexamine the assumptions they hold about the poor, to help them expand their inventory of ideas, to introduce Americans to the poor with these platforms that I have. So I’m not in the endorsing business, I’m in the accountability business. And that’s why we’re on this Poverty Tour.

But to your question, I don’t think the President would be hurt, necessarily—the country certainly would not be hurt—by a primary challenge that would refocus him on what really matters. It would refocus him on what’s happening to too many people in this country. It would refocus him on a more progressive agenda. But having said that, I think if the race were held today, the President still wins. You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and I don’t see who the somebody is that can beat the President. So, Doc and I have had many debates, and I’m sure we’re going to get right back at this debate once we get on the bus again and take off to the next city in just a few minutes on the Poverty Tour.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there.

TAVISSMILEY: But I think that a challenge would refocus him—

AMYGOODMAN: Tavis, we’re going to have to leave it there. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, thanks so much for joining us.